Prince Naif said the extremists believed in the idea of launching suicide attacks. “They are young and have been brainwashed,” he added.

The prince’s statement came a day after the Interior Ministry announced that security forces were hunting for the terrorists, who included a Kuwaiti-Canadian of Iraqi origin and a Yemeni.

A search of the gunmen’s hideouts and their getaway car led police to a cache of arms and ammunition that included 55 hand grenades, 377 kg explosives, 2,545 bullets of different calibers, cash and disguises.

Describing the militants as “corrupt, traitors and aggressors,” the Kingdom’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, said they must be severely punished.

The discovery of the cell came a week after the United States pulled its troops out of the Kingdom and after the US Embassy here warned its citizens that terror groups might be planning an attack.

Paying tribute to the authorities for their swift action against the terrorists, Deborah Robin Croft, press attaché at the US Embassy, said: “We are relieved that the Al-Qaeda plot was foiled in the nick of time. It is something unprecedented and very heartening to know that the Saudi security personnel managed to discover the cell before any damage had been done.”

Asked if the crackdown on the cell had anything to do with the visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Kingdom next week, Deborah said it was pure coincidence, since the visit had been planned in advance. “I will not speculate,” she said, adding that the ongoing investigation would shed light on these developments. The Saudi government, she pointed out, has been working very closely with the FBI within the framework of their security cooperation.

Commenting on the discovery of the terrorist network in the capital, Sabir Al-Abid, an educationalist, said the whole trend of extremist thinking militated against the concept of Islam. “We refuse to condone such acts and condemn them outright. These young people have strange ideas which they probably brought from outside. They seem to have some personality problem. They are certainly not normal.”

Asked whether teachers were making any attempt to instill discipline in students, Al-Abid said that some of them were trying to do just that. “I am planning to develop a program intended to teach students Islamic values as a bulwark against terrorism. Some other teachers were doing the same in the hope of turning their students into good citizens.”

Abdulaziz Al-Hendi, a senior Saudi journalist, described Tuesday’s action by the security forces as a “great success.” “They are proactive and well trained in the art of rooting out the infrastructure of terror. I am quite confident that sooner or later they will also apprehend the culprits, who should be duly punished.”